


Personalized

by avocadoave



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-10-09 23:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10424010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadoave/pseuds/avocadoave
Summary: Set around the time of Season 10. An exchange on Mulder's birthday.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @leiascully's XF Writing Challenge: Names. One hour time limit. No beta-ing, per the rules.

 

She looks at the gift bag on the passenger seat. Even after driving all the way out here, she is still unsure. She’d almost turned around three times. What was the proper etiquette regarding birthday gifts for your estranged partner/friend/spouse? Hell, she’d bet even the ghost of Emily Post wouldn’t have an answer for this one.

There was something surreal about knocking on the door of a place you used to live. She sets the shiny bag at her feet and rubs her hands together. It is always colder out here than in the city. She knocks again and wonders if she’ll have to leave the cake on the doorstep. What kind of birthday surprise would it be for him to come home to ravaged pink cardboard, scattered chocolate crumbs and a scurry of squirrels on a sugar high?

She could use her key. Step inside thirteen feet and leave the gift on the coffee table. He hadn’t changed the locks; she knew that. She pulls her keys from her coat pocket, then remembers she removed his key from her ring in a moment of weakness. Or maybe it was strength. The key was tucked away in her sock drawer. It needed to be in one of those ‘Break In Case of Emergency’ glass boxes. At least once a week she felt the pull of him, the tug of this place. Fought the urge to pack up her car and come home. Having the key with her was too much of a temptation. It would be too easy to be pulled back into his orbit. Into the darkness.

“Hey!” he calls.

She turns. He stops his bike at the foot of the porch stairs and hops off. He lifts his bike by the crossbar onto the porch and leans it against the railing. He pulls off his helmet, hangs it on a handlebar, his hair is damp and matted. He reaches behind him and unzips the pocket on the back of his blinding yellow cycling jersey, pulls out his house key. He unstraps his shoes, leaving them beside the doormat. He opens the door and gestures for her to come in.

She looks at her shoes, around the room, down inside the bag she’s carrying. Anywhere but in front of her. Walking behind Mulder in a pair of jeans is hard enough, but clad in black biking shorts? She shakes her head, exhaling slowly.

“Do you mind if I—“ he motions upstairs.

“Sure. Shower, whatever you need to do. I just wanted to drop this off—“ The bag dangles from her fingers.

“Stay,” he asks. “I’ll just be a couple minutes.”

She nods.

“Make yourself at home,” he calls from the landing.

She cringes. She hates that he needs to say that to her. She perches on the edge of the couch, running her fingertips along the pebbled, gray leather. She is a guest here, she reminds herself.

He jogs back down, taking stairs two at a time, hair damp, faded black t-shirt, jeans, feet bare. He pads into the kitchen.

“Something to drink?”

“Uh, water?” she calls back.

He walks back in the living room, two bottles of water clasped in his left hand raking through his hair with his right.

He hands her a bottle and sits down in a chair next to the couch, cracking the lid on his bottle and taking a long swallow.

He looks better than he has in months, maybe years. He’s clean-shaven, hair neatly trimmed. Has the glow of an endorphin high. He’s been cycling lately, running everyday now too hard on his 53, now 54-year-old knees.

Over coffee one Sunday in August he told her about the road bike he had recently purchased. He was excited and she nagged him about wearing a helmet, spouting statistics about cycling fatalities and head traumas. He rolled his eyes in the way henpecked husbands do.

She sets her bottle down on the coffee table and pulls things out of the gift bag. She hands him the cardboard box from Baked & Wired.

“Happy Birthday,” she smiles.

He takes the box and opens the lid. Inside sits a small chocolate cake with ‘Happy Birthday Mulder,’ in white butter cream script with fancy frosting filigree.

She sticks a fat, yellow candle into the cake and pulls a lighter from her pocket.

“Make a wish.”

“You gonna sing to me, Scully?”

“I think we both know you’ll have a happier birthday if I don’t.”

He closes his eyes and puffs out the flame.

She’s not going to ask what he wished for. She has a pretty good idea what it might be. She can’t hear him say any sentence with the combination of the words ‘you’ and ‘home.’ His eyes questioning if or when. Not yet.

“Thanks,” he smiles.

She returns his grin.

“Will you have a piece?”

“A little one. The cake, it’s from that place in Georgetown. You know that one where—“

Her phone buzzes. She glances at the screen. “Sorry.”

He shrugs.

She glances at her phone. The text is informing her of a two-for-one special at the pizza place by her house.

“I have to go,” she says, standing. “I’m sorry. I’m on call and—“

“I understand.”

She is grateful for the out. She is on call. That part isn’t a lie. She just can’t stay. She can feel her resolve weakening with each passing second. The scent of a freshly showered Mulder, the way her name rolls off his tongue. The joy in his eyes at having her there.

Her cheeks flush with shame and anger at her weakness.

She hugs him and kisses his cheek. “Happy Birthday, Mulder.”

“Thanks for remembering, Scully.”

She smiles. “Oh, I almost forgot!” she grabs the neatly wrapped package off the table and hands it to him. Each ribbon is perfectly curled, the corners of the striped paper done with military precision.

He shakes the box next to his ear.

She rolls her eyes at the juvenile action. Some things never change.

He waves to her from the doorway as she drives off. She spends the drive home mentally slapping herself and exhausting her extensive vocabulary of synonyms for coward.

After she leaves he sits down and slides off the ribbon, tears the paper and pries open the box. He brushes tissue aside. Inside is one of those little personalized state license plates that kids hang on the back of their bikes. It is a Virginia plate and it says, “Mulder.”

He laughs. She must have had it specially made.

He’d complained to her more than once about never having personalized anything as a kid growing up with a name like Fox.

Years ago at a gas station in Arizona, she’d bought him a souvenir keychain with a picture of the Grand Canyon that said, “Sorry, They Didn’t Have Your Name.” He’d used that keychain until it fell apart. It was still one of the best gifts she’d ever given him.

Somewhere nine-year-old Fox Mulder is jealous. The plate license plate would have looked amazing on his 1969 green Schwinn Stingray. It won’t work on his Bianchi, but it’ll hang perfectly on the tandem bike he bought on Craigslist, that’s currently tucked away in the shed. He’ll show it to her when she comes home.

_fin._


End file.
